Navigate:

A code of conduct for apps

More likely to drive debate, though, is the geolocation data that governments and law-enforcement agencies can obtain from users with smartphones — with or without apps. A key decision by the Supreme Court earlier this year cast into jeopardy the government’s legal rationale for obtaining geolocation data without a warrant, said Jot Carpenter, vice president of government affairs with CTIA, an association representing wireless companies.

That decision has resonated on the Hill, where a House subcommittee last week held a hearing on a bill that would set limits on how law enforcement can obtain and use geolocation data. It was the first such hearing on the proposal, which has a Senate counterpart.

Text Size

-

+

reset

The Senate Judiciary Committee has not yet scheduled a hearing on the topic, but supporters of geolocation legislation remain hopeful.

“The Supreme Court has practically begged Congress to step in and provide some clear rules for location tracking technologies,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the bill’s sponsors. He predicted the House effort “will help increase our momentum.”

Mobile wallet safety

The growing interest in turning smartphones into virtual wallets — storage units for digital credit cards, ticket stubs and IDs — has triggered another debate at the intersection of new technology and old federal rules.

While banks, credit card companies and tech giants spar over the physical means of making those kinds of transactions possible, regulators have started thinking about how old financial laws apply to the new ways of doing business — literally.

The broad issue of mobile payments prompted the FTC to hold a daylong workshop on the issue, focused in part on apps. Twice now, congressional committees have weighed mobile payments issues during hearings; the Senate Banking Committee is set to hold another hearing next month, a panel spokesman told POLITICO. Close watchers of the debate see every reason for the scrutiny to continue.

“I think the FTC is going to be involved, at least setting best practices for things like how data is handled and privacy policies for mobile apps, and that will likely to some degree involve mobile wallets,” said Daniel Castro, senior analyst at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

Noting the wide array of actors in this space — banks, card issuers, tech companies and wireless giants — Castro said there simply “can’t be five different regulators setting the data standards for all of those.”

Apps are only a small portion of the broader conversation about mobile payments. But the industry has a great stake, Sparapani said.

“Virtually every bank, virtually every credit card, many merchants are all creating their own apps,” he explained of the digital wallet and mobile payment industry. “I think it’s a fight right now over market share and who gets to take the benefits of being the payment processors or the digital wallets, rather than that there is any clear need for any regulation and legislation.”